A Fistful of Dong

As was to be expected new year started with a bang! Fireworks exploded all over the city making almost every car and ebike alarm scream. Having spent the last two new years in Beijing I was expecting Kunming to be a slightly less chaotic affair. I was wrong, if anything the noise was worse and lasted longer than I thought possible. So when Monday came around and it was time for my holiday I was thanking every god I could think of. A short flight (not even an hour flight time) and we landed into the disappointingly cold HaNoi airport. After a brief mess about with transfers we made it to HaNoi backpacker’s hostel.

HaNoi is an amazing city or at least the old quarter where we were staying and the surrounding areas. I am hugely taken with Vietnam, the food is much more ‘Claire’ friendly as there is almost no spice it’s all flavour and loads of seafood. We spent almost every meal at this little street food place by the hostel where I bought the best seafood fried rice I have ever eaten for about 10Y. I found Vietnam really cheap, even in comparison to living in china. Karina and I did lots of shopping (her much more that I) and am average handbag costs about $7. The only problem we had was the money! 26,000 dong is about £1 or 10RMB so we were frequently dealing in 500,000 dong or a million. The numbers were astounding and made it so much easier to think in US dollars, which we then had to translate into pounds and back into RMB. Needless to say our buying calculations took some time and often a piece of paper to write it all down.

Jolly Rodger Booze Boat

I spent three whole days in HaNoi before going on the hostels organised tour to HaLong Bay. The tour was called the Rock Long Rock Hard tour so I was fairly clued up about what kind of cruise I was going on. However I was not counting, at 23, to be the oldest person on the boat. I was on a cruise with about 50 19/20/21 year old gap year students! We drank almost solid for the whole duration of the cruise and played constant drinking games. Even our canoe ride about the bay was beer filled which sadly lead to us being towed back to the end as we were not really getting the whole parking thing. Myself and the guy I had been paired up with were then basically dragged out of our canoes as it was just all too difficult climbing out! I can also now say that I have bought a beer at the bar Top Gear went to on their biking adventure of Vietnam.

HaLong bay is like nothing I have ever seen. It was easy to try and draw comparisons to Guilin and my travels last year but it was just blown out of the water! Even in the nasty and bitter cold of January I managed a swim in the bay, which actually wasn’t too bad. We ate the food out of the bay that the Vietnamese staff on the boat had caught during the day and sat up watching the sunrise. Despite the horrid hangover and the sick feeling looking at a beer caused me for about three days after it was an amazing tour, one that I shall defiantly be aiming to do again at some point in the future.

Halong Bay just before sunrise.

Back in HaNoi, with my remaining two days before we were heading home all I had to do was some souvenir shopping and the war museum. I made the mistake of going to the war museum with and already sulky American Tom who when her realised it was all very anti America basically sat on the curb waiting for me to finish looking about. We did get to play in various helicopters and tanks and watched a crazy film in Chinese about how horrible the Americans are. Which made me giggle and tom sulk some more.

Our journey back was long but relatively painless and stress free. It’s an overnight train journey to Nanning stopping at several check points along the way; the first one was about 2:30 am at the Vietnamese border, the second twenty minutes later at Chinese customs where our bags were scanned and passports stamped again. Finally we got to Nanning at about 11am the following morning where it was a short 5 hour wait for the next train to Kunming. I think three of these five hours were spent sat in McDonalds as it was warm with a steady supply of food, as long as one of us was eating or drinking something we didn’t really think the staff would complain. There was no complaining just bucket loads of dirty looks! After that it was a short 14 hour train journey back to Kunming and a bus journey home. Like I say stress free but so long!